


Light Leaks

by dearcaspian



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Wings, Dean is a Sweetheart, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Wings, sam is there only briefly, set somewhere in the earlier seasons i think, some light smooching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:30:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14216205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearcaspian/pseuds/dearcaspian
Summary: “Am I ever going to see what they can?”This comes out less audible than he means it to, a breath both hesitant and hopeful, hiding hours of idle curiosity and awe he would never admit to anyone. He winces as soon as the question forms. Even if he could see he probably wouldn’t be worthy of it. He held reverence for few holy things, but a man who has been dragged through hell and purgatory and the blood of innocent people surely didn’t deserve to bear witness to something so ethereal.





	Light Leaks

One drizzly summer night, Dean rolls over on scratchy hotel sheets, gently shifting warm skin and tangled limbs, and thinks of Castiel.

Castiel, who lies an unmoving and solid center of gravity beside him, flesh flawless and muscled and muted ivory in the clouded moonlight slipping faintly through the patched curtains. Castiel, whose legs twist languidly between his own, torso pressed flush to his back, arms lost somewhere in between them, Castiel who tickles the back of Dean’s neck with every exhale, a soft, solemn reassurance of dependability.

Cas, whom Dean had barely begun to map out. Grit and blood and grace stretched out like unfinished roadways in some corner of his mind, always occupying a portion of subconscious in a search for completed paths.

Dean thinks often of Castiel, but rarely mentions it aloud.

The cramped hotel room they inhabit is filled with the hush of a town around them which, for the most part, sleeps. A thin layer of dust litters the surface of the table and mismatched chairs. The tv screen fizzes mutely with static in the background, casting flickers of light on the ragged carpet. They hardly fit on the rickety bed and the air verges on stifling, but Dean doesn’t mind. Sam had left for the fleeting chance of a case two towns away and so for the first time in a long while he has the angel to himself. It was a rare opportunity to shut out the demons and monsters, the hunters, the deaths and gunpowder, their entire world of responsibilities.

It’s just the two of them, bodies sore, satiated with the taste and touch of the other. For once, Dean feels blissfully unaccounted for in the scheme of the universe.

He stares up at a corner of the room, breathes out a sigh, and then returns his thoughts as he had been for the past hour to the stranger from earlier that day.

 _It’s like the leaks of a broken camera lens_ , she had said to Castiel as the two waited in line for Dean’s lunch. She stood behind them, dressed in a too-large shirt and jeans scuffed at the knees, the hilt of a knife barely brushing past the top of her left boot. A hunter no doubt, although not one he had ever encountered before. Her expression of soft reverence puzzled him; but her statement, delivered in hushed astonishment, was much harder to understand.

Dean watched Castiel for a response, automatically longing to reach for his own knife out of sheer bewilderment. The angel merely tilted his head, asking: _What do you mean?_

 _Your… self,_ she said. _It reminds me of photos developed from cameras with broken lenses. Light bursts and cracks out from parts of the image. You’re much the same. How are you fitting in there?_

Castiel smiled sadly and said, _I’m the only occupant_ . _That helps._

 _Oh,_ she replied. She smiled back and moved ahead of them to collect her order as it was called, disappearing out the door onto the crowded street.

The two watched her go, Dean flicking from her quickly retreating form to Castiel’s face, partial understanding dawning in equal amazement and doubt.

He hasn’t stopped recalling it since.

The sheets rustle beside him. Dean stiffens, fearful he may have disturbed Castiel before remembering he was never actually asleep to begin with. He only portrayed a convincing facsimile. Cas buries his head further into Dean’s neck, unearthing one arm to drape it across his hip.

Vibrations of a gravelly murmur rumble across his skin.

“Cas?” he whispers uncertainty.

The angel shifts again.

“I said, go back to sleep. Your thinking can wait until the morning.”

Dean huffs. “Disturbing you, am I?”

“Just because I don’t require sleep doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a likeness it from time to time.”

Dean reaches down and splays the fingers of one hand across Castiel’s, fingertips grazing back and forth over the other’s knuckles.

“I’m not thinking, I’m just-”

“Over thinking?”

A smirk curls the side of Dean’s mouth.

“No, smartass,” he says under his breath, reluctant to startle the quiet of the night. “I just can’t sleep.”

Castiel is moving, pulling away and putting order to the labyrinth of their limbs. Instinctively Dean turns and follows until they are facing each other, noses a few inches apart, separate once more in all but one loosely clasped pair of hands.

“Why?”

Through the dim room Castiel’s eyes stick out as a singular point of focus, drawing Dean inward, sharp blue reduced to a softer, more forgiving shade in the dark. Despite the smooth hills of his form stretched out in shadow, Dean reminds himself that this is a thunderstorm under the pretense of a man and lightning crashes through those bones, and that apparently on some level of existence celestial intent spreads out like light leaks of overexposure from his human shell, and on other levels Castiel himself is reduced to light entirely, or elevated: wavelengths of purpose, glory and fury, two thousand years plus of watching, waiting.

Dean is not often humbled. The momentary sense of being a pinprick among greater stars drives him to commit to the truth.

“‘Cause of you.”

Castiel’s face softens, puzzlement drifting away into concern. “I don’t understand.”

“No, not like that. I’m not... upset or angry or whatever,” Dean reassures, freeing their hands so he can reach up and trace the constant stubble on Cas’s jaw. “I can’t get that girl from earlier out of my head.

“Ah,” Cas hums. “Her.”

A tranquil silence descends. Dean waits with some patience, although the response is not what he expects.

“I’ve only met four of them, actually.”

“Four of who?” he asks, missing the connection.

“Four humans with the ability to see an angel’s true form, including her. Or, at least, humans who can take a brief glimpse and still part sane.”

Oh, Dean thinks. His hand falls from Castiel’s cheek. “How many are there?”

“No one knows,” the angel muses. “Past prophets might, perhaps. But in my time on earth I’ve only come across four who have acknowledged themselves to me. I can’t tell what they’re seeing.

“Apparently it’s like leaking light, huh?” Dean says.

Castiel’s lips twitch. “Each human has their own interpretation. I guess that made the most sense to her.”

Dean nods, somewhat satisfied by these remarks, answers to questions he did not realize he wanted to ask. But something still nags, tugging repeatedly until he lends it words.

“Am I ever going to see what they can?”

This comes out less audible than he means it to, a breath both hesitant and hopeful, hiding hours of idle curiosity and awe he would never admit to anyone. He winces as soon as the question forms. Even if he could see he probably wouldn’t be worthy of it. He held reverence for few holy things, but a man who has been dragged through Hell and Purgatory and the blood of innocent people surely didn’t deserve to bear witness to something so ethereal.

“I assume you mean in your current form,” Cas says after a beat, “and preferably without losing your eyesight.”

“That’d be nice, yeah. But listen, I didn’t-”

“Actually, Dean, I think you could.”

He sounds so assured, gazing over at Dean in bright contemplation. Both are now more conscious than they had been, roused from the prior lull the warm room and close contact provided.

“Not completely,” Castiel continues before Dean can speak. “If you couldn’t hear me when I pulled you from Hell then you wouldn’t be able to see me now. But I could show you a part. I’m not supposed to, “he admits wistfully, “but I doubt Heaven cares what I do anymore.”

“Cas,” Dean begins, but he is hushed by a finger across his mouth.

“It’s okay. Sit up.”

They pull apart, dragging themselves upward until they sit on either side of the bed, knees touching.

“Close your eyes,” Cas instructs. Dean obeys.

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“Wings,” comes the answer through the blackness.

“I’ve already-”

“Not shadows,” Castiel corrects. “Not those rough silhouettes you’ve seen before. These exist on a different plane. I can only conjure up a copy which pales in comparison to reality, but you should be able to view something.”

“Why are you indulging me?” Dean asks with a crooked smile as he feels two fingers press against his temple.

“Because you asked. Now, open your eyes.”

Dean does.

The room is filled with a massive presence: a living bulk, a mass so dark it shines brighter than anything he’s ever seen before, a brilliant and most vivid black he did not know humans could process. It stretches out from Castiel’s back in two forms to the left and right, both rising until the moon from the window is blotted out. All Dean sees is a divine and intangible splendor pushing at the ceiling, knocking over the bedside lamp with a crash, arcing around corners. The walls bend down to these incorporeal appendages and Dean suddenly understands that four walls were never meant to hold anything of the like. A human vessel was never meant to accommodate a creature even remotely like an angel. Long gleaming feathers bristle and pull against one another as the wings rise further up, straining at Castiel’s shoulder blades, desperate from a time spent so huddled in that distant invisible expanse. He lets out a groan, part pain and pleasure, and Dean feels all air leave his lungs, making space for fervid, fearful admiration and nothing else.

It is something other than beauty. Cas himself is illuminated with a blue-gold glow. A ringing rattles in Dean’s ears and then swiftly he’s aware of a rapturous, terrible crescendo all around him, two thousand immortal years clinging to those wings now making themselves known, and Dean thinks surely he could drown in this, surely he could drown-

Castiel releases his hand and Dean slams his eyes shut. The world comes to a halt again.

“Cas,” Dean says raggedly. The only sound is his roughened breathing. “Fuck. You. Those…”

“You can look again now.”

He does so slowly, inch by careful inch. It is the same as it was before, save for a few differences, proof it hadn’t been a hallucination. The lamp laid in pieces on the floor. The tv stood on the very edge of its stand, cord yanked from the wall. Running cracks lined the sun-stained wallpaper. The moon shone again on both of them, a light forever weaker than what he had just observed.

Castiel is quiet, waiting, apprehensive. He looks smaller somehow than before, all of him shoved back into an object of mortality. Dean studies him with a fresh perspective as he gains his senses. He takes in the reality of the person before him, compares it to the shining grandeur of what part of him had visited temporarily from that other stratum, and decides Cas in this form has never been more lovely than he is right now.

“Dean?” Cas ventures. “Are you...?”

Dean frowns. “What, blind?” he exclaims after a pause, startling into laughter. It rings through the heat and still of the air. “No, I’m not blind! I’m, I don’t know, Cas. What just happened?”

“It wasn’t exactly real, but they were tangible enough. I was correct in my assumption, though. I believe your intermingling with Heaven and Hell may have had some influence on what you can perceive.”

“So I could hear you now, maybe?”

“Let’s not go that far just yet.”

“It was beautiful, Cas. I’m speechless.”

“You’re okay?” Cas asks, clearly concerned.

“It’s a good speechless. Just give me a moment.”

But Castiel does not. Instead he wraps an arm around Dean’s neck and pulls him back down on the bed, but misjudges the distance, bringing the two over the edge and onto the floor with a thunk. Dean is laughing again, out of breath, covering the angel with kisses everywhere he can reach, and Cas grins until he can’t anymore, reaching for arms and legs to the tune of thank you for that Cas, thank you, thank you.

Sam returns the next morning to a destroyed hotel and two bodies draped in blankets on the ground. He throws his stuff down, holds back involuntary noises of disgust, and informs the two loudly that he’s _getting his own place next time, assholes_ , before closing the door.


End file.
